Many months ago, as the ratings for Agents of SHIELD began its free fall during the midst of a very bad creative funk for the show, Clark Gregg took umbrage with some of the critics of the show who described themselves as geeks. “Those aren’t geeks. Those are losers,” Gregg said, suggesting that real fans should stick around because the show would get much better.

The good news is, it did get better. The bad news is, it took about two months after Gregg made that statement before the show really began turn around. It wasn’t until the plotline began to intersect with Captain America 2 that things finally got interesting, and based on recent ratings, it may have been too late.

In an interview with Screencrush’s Mike Ryan, however, Clark Gregg clarified the “loser” comment, essentially apologizing for speaking for all geeks and hurting some people’s feelings.

It hurt some people’s feelings and I didn’t mean to imply that people who had, as he said, all the geeks had given up on your show. I consider myself in that category. So, I didn’t like things spoken for by that guy and I got defensive and a little protective of my team. But, I know it hurt some people’s feelings when I said that and I really regret it. People can watch or not watch, it doesn’t mean they’re a loser. But, that said, I was kind of tying to speak for the nerd that I am, who grew up reading Marvel stuff and just say, look, have some patience. These are brand new characters — the only brand new Marvel characters you’re going to see; all of the other ones are 30-years-old and have had time to be refined with the comics — you’ve got brand new people putting together a team and kind of establishing these characters in a way that, trust me, to quote a title, is going to be useful once we get to the back half.

When I first read that quote, I thought you meant it as “you’re a loser because you’re going to miss out on something you might like,” not that you’re actually a loser, but maybe you did mean that …

It was a terrible attempt — and if I actually did the delivery — it’s something that we used to say, jokingly, you don’t even spell it the same way: l-o-o-s-u-h. You’re a loosuh. Maybe there’s a “z” in there. And it was just, yeah, you’re going to be losing out.

So he was joking, the joke didn’t come off in print like he’d have liked it too, and he really wants us all to watch Agents of SHIELD. Please.

I also encourage you to read the rest of the interview, where Gregg talks about the series chances of renewal, and how if the finale’s storyline will play into the overall Marvel Universe.

The show didn’t get any better. I don’t really see anything that would make a non-comic fan want to stick around. Writing is still dumb and without any subtlety, the acting is bad, and the productions values haven’t gotten any better. There was a recent twist to shake things up and that was poorly executed too.

what no, don’t apologize. There were a LOT of wankers saying stupid things at the start of the show and screw ‘em for giving up.

The show got really good. The last 5-6 episodes have been great and it was building up before Captain America even.

People unfairly chucked it in the “procedural crime drama but they mention Thor LOL” bin because it took a little while to ramp up the story and explore the characters. Now it’s where it needs to be. There’s no mystery of the week, they’re not cleaning up the unseen action from other bits of the way out of budget Marvel Movie Empire. It’s a solid show. Is it the best show ever? Naaah.

It is a pretty solid show with a good plot and gets to benefit from all of the guest stars they can bring into the show to tie into the movies in some way.

Let’s face it, people were shitting on the show before a single episode had aired, because the internet does this thing where it summarily decides some things are awesome and other things suck WAY before anyone could ever reasonably know the difference.

Yeah, I was wondering that as well. Saw this article and was all “Uh… it did a 1.8 preliminary and it always goes up from the prelim numbers…” Grossly under representing the rating seems almost like a deliberate attempt to make the series look like it’s in bad shape when it isn’t.

I stayed for a half a season and kept making excuses for why it was so bad, I stuck in longer than I should have. I might go back and see it now that everyone says it’s better (and I generally want it to be good!” But it just seems like such a hassle. I’ll probably wait for the netflix

It’s improved immensely . I doubt it gets canned and worked out the kinks about having a season long build so I think next season improves even more. With Samuel L showing up next week, they’ll get the bump in ratings to justify the renewal

05.07.14 at 11:53 pm

Shadowtag

I no longer drink when it’s on and actually pay attention. That’s how much better it is now.

05.08.14 at 12:00 am

Oeuvre

Obviously, most of you weren’t around for the beginning of SG-1. It was terrible then slowly built into one of the better Sci/Fi shows ever.

M:AoS has that same feel about it. It started slow, since they had to build everything from scratch for these characters, and now it’s on a roll — getting better each week.

Basically, Gregg was correct, if you bail/bailed on it then you were losers of seeing something grow into a special TV show.

Hell, look at Star Trek: The Next Generation. That got shit on constantly in the early days, and really took about 2 and a half seasons to find its legs, and became one of the best sci fi shows ever. Very rarely does a show start off firing on all cylinders.

He should be sorry. The show was awful for at least half the season. Lately, though, it’s really picked up quite a bit and is honestly better. I look forward to watching it now, when before I had to MAKE myself watch. I may have even missed an episode or two. I’M NOT EVEN SURE BECAUSE IT WAS SO BAD.

I was one of those who gave this show a lot of shit, but I kept watching in good faith. Not going to say the last few episodes make up for the first part of the season, but it’s definitely stepped up and worth the watch. Glad I stuck around.

I skipped a bunch of episodes in the middle, but picked it back up again when I saw that it started to get better grades on the AV Club. It’s turned into a lot of fun, solved some of it’s character issues and is primed to get with some good old fashioned Marvel weirdness.

I think the problem is that Deathlok on the show (not sure if it’s the actor they got to play him or the writing for him) is just awful and so much of the first half of the season revolved around him. He’s back, but he’s not a focal point.